ERROR
by Fauxhound
Summary: That blue-eyed android gets Chell out of the facility like he planned. He's never seen snow before. It's peaceful when they leave. It's frigid when he gets snow into his system. Wheatley's memory system has malfunctioned and now he can't remember who he is. He can't remember who Chell is. Everything comes back in bits and pieces but then it's gone again. Chell just wants him back.
1. SYSTEM FAILURE

Chell had been trapped in that facility for so long.

Not anymore. She wouldn't have to live in the threat of a homicidal robot any longer. She would not be trapped in some secret building lost where no one could ever find her. She could see the sky again, breathe real air again.

And it was all thanks to him.

She didn't hide her smile. Wheatley chuckled excitedly as the lift rose higher to their freedom.

* * *

The air was crisper than Chell remembered air could be. Being stuck down in Aperture for so long made her forget what fresh air was even like. Back down there she was never cold. Maybe it was the fact that she never got the chance to stay still, or maybe it was GlaDOS's doing. Either way, up here, things where different. She untied the filthy jumpsuit at her waist and pulled it up over her shoulders.

Snow crunched underneath her long fall boots as she stepped away from the lone shed that she'd come from. The weather wasn't like she imagined, but it was still a beauty she could truly appreciate. What looked like miles of wheat stretched out before her like a white-capped sea. The sky above was dark, quite opposite to the constant lighting in Aperture, and speckled with stars. Every exhalation of breath came with a cloud of white.

It was more than she could ever imagine.

"Wow... isn't it gorgeous?" Wheatley strode out of the doors of the shed behind her, lanky arms dangling at his sides and head tilted up into the sky. His wide blue eyes were fixed on the stars.

Chell didn't think he'd ever seen them before. Not like this.

"Beautiful night! Perfect for our escape, eh?" He glanced back at his friend, sporting a silly lopsided grin and pushed up the glasses beginning to tilt off of his face. "Everything went as smoothly as planned- we really make a team, don't we?"

Chell didn't smile, but she did offer him a nod. He was right. They'd managed to get out of there just as planned, as soon as he could raise the lift, he exited from the mainframe and they moved straight to freedom.

The android stepped forward to follow after the tracks Chell made in the snow, smiling a little to himself as he heard the crunch of the snow just as she had. "Quite pretty, too. The snow, I mean. I've seen it before. Not in person, though, but close enough. Well, this is better, don't you think? Colder than I imagined, but, ah, I suppose I should've assumed it would be. It is made of ice after all..."

She wasn't sure how much longer Wheatley rambled on about the cold and the ice. The bot tended to ramble a lot, and Chell was used to tuning him out when he went overboard. Instead, she focused on the world around her and the prints her boots made in the snow, and the inky sprinkled sky. She focused on the feeling in her chest behind her ribs, expanding through her body, thinking that she was free. She was finally free.

"Ah!-"

Chell paused and turned to look over her shoulder at Wheatley's shout. A thud sounded in the silent atmosphere. Of course, the android had slipped. Chell rolled her eyes in amusement and drifted over to him.

He sat up, brushing snow off of his uniform and out of his once-neat ginger hair. "Hell," he cursed, furrowing his brows. "That's bloody col—c-c-c..."

He twitched and shook his head, looking confused. It seemed that he'd glitched for a second there, and he laughed a little nervously. A fear somehow even more frigid than the air gnawed into Chell's heart. What the hell was that?

"Weird," Wheatley mused, and he shifted to rise to his feet. His legs gave out under him and he landed on his backside with a grunt. Although he seemed to be trying to control his emotions, Chell could easily read the terror that was growing on his face.

Her heart began to race and she swept over and grabbed one of his arms to help him up. He struggled, but even with her help, his attempts were fruitless. His legs just were not working.

"What was that?" Wheatley's eyes were bright in the darkness of the night, but they were fading. They had certainly lost a lot of the brilliance they'd had when he flashed her a grin earlier. He wiped his glasses off on his uniform. Once the light in his eyes flicked out. He paused. They sputtered back to life. He looked up at Chell, twitching and jerking in a manner that could only be bad news.

Breathing was getting harder for Chell. Her hold on his arm tightened and she dropped to her knees.

"I-I think some of the snow got i-i-into-to my system, l-luv," he told her, his malfunctioning audio systems acting like a stutter from the cold. "I m-might..."

And suddenly, his voice was gone, as if at the press of a button, and he was making no sound. Mute. Chell could feel her throat closing.

Wheatley looked more panicked than ever, dropping his glasses in the snow and grasping at her jumpsuit with twitching fingers, mouthing out desperate pleas for help that even Chell couldn't read.

Chell was never one to panic. Her body kicked into autopilot, just as it did in every situation that risked a life so dangerously. She slung his arm over her shoulder.

His eyes flickered, going black, and staying that way. His arms went limp and slipped off of her shoulder.

She tried to catch him before his back hit the snow but he'd moved too quickly. Eyes shut, the robot was still as he laid in the whiteness of the freezing snow.

Chell was never one to panic. She leaped to her feet and swiped his glasses off of the ground, placing them in her mouth and moved over to Wheatley. She stopped behind him, hoisting him up by his underarms to make him sit up in her hold.

She looked around desperately. Nothing. Nothing but white snow and black sky and nothing at all and it was no longer soothing, it was terrifying. She pulled him towards the shed and tried to push the doors open to no avail. Coldness was seeping through her clothes. Of all times, why now? She pulled him away and back into the snow.

Dragging tracks through with his legs, she trekked in the snow into that great big black-white nothing. Every step felt like miles with the weight of Wheatley's body straining her every movement and as fatigue fell over her with so much momentum she nearly lurched. Without the air that supplemented her and kept her alive in Aperture, she was weakened. She could feel it in her body.

But she kept going. She needed to get him out. Somewhere safe.

And Chell was never one to panic.


	2. DISCONNECTED

Chell's fingers were numb.

She didn't know how long she'd been pulling Wheatley through the snow, but her legs were aching and vertigo was taking its toll on her. A couple times she had to pause to take a break because this wheat field was so big, but she knew she couldn't take her time on this. His life depended on it.

The field slowly faded out into flatter land. The field became dirt, which became a road. The snow never ended. In fact, it began to pick up at some point she couldn't recall and showered flakes of frost over the both of them like a deathly blanket. Still, she did not stop.

Her arms soon became too tired to continue to pull that heavy android any further and she stopped, lowering him gently to the ground and sitting beside him. She'd made it far, though, and although the sky was still dark there was asphalt and sidewalk and cars. The air was freezing around her as she hugged her knees into her chest, dark eyes flicking over to her malfunctioning companion repeatedly to check for some sort of change.

Cars rumbled by on the road over and over, filling the streets with a mechanical roar. Chell rubbed her hands together, hoping the friction would spark warmth in her frigid fingers. Another glance was thrown in Wheatley's direction, but there was no signal of consciousness (or life, but Chell shut away those thoughts) in the android's face.

A sleek little black car slowed near the side of the road and rolled up to the duo. Chell tensed, hoping for help but expecting trouble. GLaDOS was to blame for that- her cruelty to the girl raised a cynical mind.

"Do you guys need help?" A bright-eyed, brown-skinned girl was poking her head out of the window, bony fingers drumming against the lowered glass.

Chell nodded vigorously as relief flooded her body. She had no trust in this girl, but she was her only hope. Wheatley's only hope. Chell got to her feet and bent down to hook her hold under Wheatley's arms.

The urgency in the girls face increased drastically. "Oh, God!" Her voice was more a yelp than anything else, like a dog that had just been kicked. "What happened to him?" She pushed the door open and scrambled out of the car, foot catching on her unlatched seat belt and almost sending herself face-first into the sidewalk. "Is he okay?"

Chell wished she had a voice to answer with. All she could offer was a shrug and a worried shake of her head. Fortunately, however, the girl did not ask anymore questions as she helped Chell with her friend. She grabbed Wheatley's legs and helped load him into the backseat. It wasn't until they had both climbed into the front seats that she said anything again.

"Do you know him?" One of her hands jutted a thumb in Wheatley's direction and the other latched onto the steering wheel.

Chell nodded.

"Can you talk?"

Chell shook her head.

The girl looked away. There was a mixture of pity, worry, and frustration in her eyes that sparked an anger in Chell to counter it. Chell did not need sympathy from anyone. The other woman didn't seem to notice the furrowing of Chell's brows, as her own gaze was finally focused on the road. She took a long breath and hit the gas.

There was a deep discomfort settling itself in the vicinity of Chell's chest. She did not enjoy depending on another person, let alone a stranger. Although she was certain she could take the girl out in hand-to-hand combat from the looks of her frail appearance, Chell and Wheatley were still speeding off to an unknown location in the silence of a stranger's car.

The girl must have taken note of Chell's tensity. She glanced over at her a couple times, unsure about taking her eyes off of the road at the speed she was going. "We need to go to a hospital," she stated. "There's one not far from here, thank God."

Chell stiffened even further, eyes widening. No. She shook her head at the girl, turning her body to face her behind her seat belt. No, they could not go into a hospital. They would find out what Wheatley is- and what he isn't. There would be too many questions and too little answers. They would take Wheatley away and Chell, too, who knows what they would do to her. She wouldn't allow it-

"What? What, why not?! Look at him!" The girl snapper her head around to look at Wheatley sprawled out across the backseats. She turned back to the road with a reckless swerve of the vehicle. "The guy's hurt. He needs to get the the E.R.! He was so cold..."

Chell shook her head again, stubbornness clear in her face as she, once again, met her stare.

The girl glowered. Clearly irritated, she fired her stare solely back to the road. "_Well_ _then_, lady, what do you say we do?"

Anywhere that wasn't a hospital would work. Chell wished a desperate stare out of the passenger window.

**EARLY STAR MOTEL**

Chell had never been more thankful in her life. She shoved finger against the moist glass in the direction of the bright red neon sign and gave the other girl a look more pointed and triumphant than she intended it to be.

* * *

"I cannot _believe_ I'm out here in a motel parking lot instead of taking this poor guy to a hospital." The girl had a habit of really emphasizing her words when she meant them. She pulled one of the back doors open, and assisted Chell in hauling him out. "I hope he's okay... I don't know why you refuse to take him to a hospital, but something tells me I don't want to."

Chell didn't look at her. She just assisted in getting the android seated by the car as softly as possible, sitting him down in a cushion of snow. She brushed icy flakes out of his red hair. He didn't need any more snow glitching his system.

"How are we even going to get this guy into here? We sure as hell can't drag him through the doors."

Chell flicked her gaze between the girl and Wheatley for a moment before she came up with anything. Her body ached from strain and exhaustion, but she kneeled down anyway. She was tired, but she was very strong. A lifetime of Aperture Science testing did that to a person.

Wheatley was still a lanky mess of a man, though. His arms were draped over he shoulders and down to her legs as the girl helped put him on Chell's back. It took a little effort from the both of them to keep him on, but they managed.

"I just hope we can get them to let us in." the girl observed Chell and the unconscious, possibly dead man on her back. "He looks like he's asleep. How are you even carrying him?"

Chell responded by walking past her and towards the open doors. She didn't want to waste any more time with her inquires.

The girl pushed the door open. "Wait back, I'll handle it."

Chell figures as much. She couldn't speak, anyway, and she didn't know sign language. There wasn't much she could do to get a room, so she merely stood at a distance, hunched over slightly to keep gravity from pulling Wheatley onto the floor back-first with his legs hooks in her arms. She watched the girl stride over to the man at the desk in a manner all too casually. Chell found it hard to make out exactly what she was saying. Perhaps it was too many exploding turrets by her ear.

The girl gestured to Chell and Wheatley once or twice, and the blond man at the desk peered around her to stare at them with raised brows.

Chell felt a rush of suspicion, but it faded as the girl turned to face her with a nod and a jingling key in hand.

The room was warm. Much warmer than the snow-coated outside world. Wheatley was laid out on a bed that was made but somehow still looking messy and the girl watched nervously as Chell sat beside him.

"Now what?" The girl questioned.

Chell didn't have an answer to that.

The girl sighed and paced a bit before she sat down as well, although she looked a tad hesitant to touch the blankets. "You're lucky I couldn't live with myself if I didn't help you, 'cos I would _so_ not be here right now. Whatever... My name's Chris."

Chell glanced over at Chris for a brief moment before her attention was turned back to Wheatley. Silence settled over the two of them as they watched him lay there on the bed, deathly still and bone-chillingly quiet. It was different to see him to silent like that. So still. He was usually so talkative and twitchy. Chell didn't like it.

There was nothing she could do about it. Not yet. The only person who knew anything about Wheatley that could be of any help was Her, and Chell wouldn't go back if her life depended on it. She wouldn't help, anyway. All Chell could do was wait; wait for Wheatley to power back up, or wait for him not to.

Chris scrubbed her hair with a hand and stood up again. "Do you think he'll wake up soon?"

Chell nodded just to keep her from calling the authorities or something. It seemed to relax the other girl, though, because a look of relief washed over her face and the loosest of smiles that joined it.

"Oh, good. Had me worried." There was still an apprehensive edge to her voice. It was enough to tell Chell that Chris wasn't sure if Chell was right or if she was even being honest, but she just chose to believe her.

Chell wasn't sure if she could choose to believe it herself.


End file.
